Hyperballad
by stromat
Summary: Sayu wakes up after a brain injury with a head full of patterns. She is now more observant of the person that insists on calling himself her brother. Discovering that he is Kira is just a side effect of everything else. AUish
1. June 13, 2003

Sayu thinks that she is drifting, because there is no better word for it. The trouble is, that she is not sure what _it_ is, or _where_ this _it_ could be. If it is nothingness, which it isn't, it wouldn't be black. Sayu is quite sure of this, and Sayu is not sure that often.

But being sure now seems like the only possible option, for there is too much room for uncertainties. If it really was nothingness, that Sayu was drifting in {which she again reminds herself, that it isn't the case} time would no longer exist and neither would certainties.

She feels cold, and wonders if she is naked. She can't see her own body.

So Sayu remains there, wherever it is, and just stays still.

...

* * *

Sayu has stayed still for some time, and feels the roots of impatience as they tug on her. They tickle her, her ankles have always been ticklish. Since there is not much to see, she pretends that she is asleep. Pretending is fun, pretending means being aware, and Sayu likes that.

While she is pretending she is also thinking. It feels as if she is turning dough, as if it is sticking to her. Her mommy always baked with some flour on her hands, so that she could later peel off the sweet mixture. Sayu remembers so much and wonders if this means what she hopes it does. That her mommy , daddy and Light, brilliant Light are also somewhere like this, thinking of her.

* * *

...

Not being able to see anything makes her think of death. And Sayu always wonders if she is dead. That would be simple, that would be _nice._ It would be expected, Sayu doesn't even dare to think for a moment that the world is here for her or for the others. That the world has nothing better to do than wait for her and for others to understand it. If this blackness is death, then it is giving her too many hints.

She is mocked, by this thing that wants to make itself look like death.

Oh, I can't see anything, oh, I feel cold, Oh, I must be dead then.

No, not at all, Sayu thinks.

Trauma and coma are fields of black, in the back of her head. All she can think of is the moment _before she hit that floor._

...

 **... June 13, 2003**

* * *

The tugging is strong, so Sayu opens her eyes. She is greeted by sterile, piercing light and the unfamiliar sound of everything being alive. Alive and interacting, reacting. Mommy is wailing, hiccuping and gasping, it seems like daddy is too. Then there is Light with his eyes wide open. He is happy.

That should have been enough, that really should have been _all_ that she was seeing. Only it was different. The whole world as Sayu had known it suddenly became sharper, it became ordered. And from that moment onward, Sayu thinks that she can understand how Light must have seen it all along.

* * *

...

This is the first movement, Sayu thinks. Like Apollo 11. She descends into this world, bright and untouched, yet prepared. There is no mistaking it.

A nurse is holding her, right under her armpits, careful with the IVs, as Sayu's right foot lightly touches the hospital floor.

The linoleum welcomes her too eagerly and Sayu crumbles. Her knees bend and she feels like a matchstick, snapped before it could burn.

''Shh, it's alright.'' The arms holding her tighten.

But she knows it isn't. There is no straining, or pain. Sayu doesn't even feel cold. Her throat should clench up now, it should burn and her eyes should prickle. But no tears come out as she tries to cry.

She is picked up, since she can see the floor from further away. Her head is cradled as it is positioned on an optimal angle for her too observe the whole ordeal. Daddy is angry, and not only because he is yelling. Sayu can see the way his veins bulge and how droplets pf sweat slide over them. Her daddy is worried and sad, because Sayu is paralyzed.

...

* * *

The shapes that she sees now are finite. If vision is like the brain taking pictures and smoothing them out into a video, Sayu can now only see the individual frames. The lined up pictures, disconnected from each other. It feels more real than anything else she might have seen _before._

She looks at the nurse's face, and wonders if every person will now have a position that is this exact in her mind. As if they were all given coordinates, Sayu can recall too much in far too many pieces.

Her family is always there, and all Sayu wants is for someone to hold her hand.

The ticking is too loud and not that precise. Now when Sayu relies on patterns, a world that wishes to be understood, has to be based on them. But then Sayu remembers, that she should never think about the world like that.

...

* * *

Small sensations return slowly. Sayu is now aware of how the mattress is not sinking as much as it should under her. She is loosing weight.

Her mommy, kneels down next to her bed and prays. Sayu head is still angled the same way, so she can't exactly see her doing it, but she can see the image of her mother in her mind so fiercely that it must be the truth. Sayu doesn't pray, since talking to something in her mind is all she does now.

If only they turned her head slightly, she would then see her in the non-fleeting images that she called her sight now. But they can't turn her head, she knows, because Sayu is still paralyzed.

The doctors can see that her breathing is steady, and that her muscles work as they should. So they take her to a functional magnetic resonance imaging, which is a long name for a brain scan. They measure the rate at which blood is supplied to different parts of her brain. And Sayu can see their surprise when they see how wild and vivid certain parts of herself still are. There are yellow blotches in her sensory area, that lit up as a Christmas tree when she is shown pictures of simple objects or faces. Symmetry, fractals in the way that water spirals down a drain, sequences that can be compressed, rhythms in footsteps, Sayu sees abstractions as compositions of something tangible.

Other parts of her brain seem dead. Her coordination, language and communication skills, her balance. All diluted and messed up.

They show her pictures, of normal brain activity and hers, as if she didn't understand that what has happened to her is not normal.

And Sayu is staring, because this, this firework that is now presented to her is too much. If this is how her brain is now, this painful and hungry thing that asks for constant patterns that it could tear apart, lying immobilized in a hospital bed is the worst strike her faith could have taken.

They even give it a name, her brain activity. Hypersensitive and scattered, with unlikely connections between areas that were never meant to interact. It takes a great toll.

...

* * *

She can now shake her fingers slightly. When mommy sees it she starts sobbing. There are flowers on her bedside table. Sunlight catches their petals and all she can think of in that moment is how their perfection is similar to so many other things in this world.

Mommy sees her glancing at the flowers and she takes one out of the vase and holds it right in front of her eyes. Sayu wants to smile, but her facial muscles don't work well, so all she can do is stare at it intently, to show her mother that she appreciates _everything_ so much.

She might never speak or move fluidly again.

Her hospital gown is suddenly too itchy. Sayu wants to shake and scream because why, why when she can finally see so much it all comes down to her being unable and limited. She only wets the bed and the humiliation she then feels is enough to make her want to fall back into the darkness again.

They pat her head and wish her goodnight.

...

* * *

It _is_ dark when she wakes up again, and Sayu panics, because what _if_ this time it is real and what if _it_ was always real?

The difference is that she can feel some things now, such as the cotton sheets or the plastic tubes that hang from the back of her head. There is also a mechanical whirring noise close to her, repetitive, a clear pattern which calms her down.

It is night. Her mommy and daddy and brother are back home sleeping. Sayu decides that she should surprise them tomorrow by doing something extraordinary normal.

Her fingers can shake a bit more now, if she presses them close enough together, maybe she could hold a pen between them. Maybe she could do so many things, maybe she could show them how much she really understands. How much more she sees, how, if she was ever sent back to school she would never ever need any help from Light with her math homework. She can see the possibilities, she feels the numbers, she can tell her mommy how her name, Sachiko, tastes letter by letter.

And her brother, Light, maybe he would finally like her, this slightly different Sayu.


	2. June 18, 2003

**... June 18, 2003**

It is her birthday. She will be fourteen in a matter of hours.

They bring her fresh flowers and the radio that usually stands in their kitchen. Sayu tries and tries, but it is physically impossible for her to smile. Instead she shakes her fingers, extra hard. They laugh and she sees how her mother wipes her eyes. She excuses herself to the toilet and Sayu can hear the click, as she shuts herself away.

Light sees that she sees, so he sits down on her bed and takes out a pen and a paper. Sayu swears that she could have kissed him.

Her hair has grown long and thin, it brushes against his knuckles. He lightly takes her wrists and guides her hand to the pen. Sayu watches her fingers tremble both in excitement and in strain. This is it.

She widens the space between her middle and index finger, and of course Light gets it immediately. He slides the pen between them and then they clamp shut, completely still.

And then everything is trembling too much to make sense. Sayu has no idea what to write, since her thinking no longer consist of words, but rather a crumble of unfamiliar concepts. She tries, tries so hard anyway, but from the way her whole body seems to convulse and cry for help, it is as if her own mind has built a barrier.

She holds in her breath and imagines her hand as it moves through space time. Her temples hurts and the tubes connected to it tighten up. She gazes at her paper and only sees something that the _previous_ Sayu would have laughed at and called ugly.

The scribble, a long, thin line, with a curving, wobbly shape that vaguely resembles a snake.

''The rod of Asceipus?'' Light breathes out, after a few seconds, unsure.

Sayu herself isn't sure.

-''Sayu, you are healing.''

She knows. So this time she only draws the snake. But Light doesn't understand. She is becoming frustrated rather quickly and her scribbles become less intelligible with each breath that she takes, soon there are just circles. Circles are everywhere, just snakes that bite their tails.

But the more she writes the less her brother seems to understand. He now gazes upon her with something in his eyes that Sayu promised herself that she would never see again. Pity. That sort of deep running pity that hurts and makes people hate themselves. And Sayu does. She hates herself so much that she vows to never try to be smart again in Lights presence.

...

* * *

...

They leave, but not before turning the radio on.

Sayu is relieved.

It reminds her of the question she once heard him discuss with dad. The one with the runaway train and a single person being sacrificed for five others. Sayu can almost feel the tracks vibrate and the chains squeal as she is lying face down on her bed. Gasping for breath. It would be her, she would be Light's sacrifice.

The nurses rush in and there is even more fire-like pain, from the unfairness, from the pity.

...

In the morning she is heaved up again. Fed udon noodles, the fat and slick ones that people slurp. Their ends wiggle.

''Such a darling girl'' the hand holding the chopsticks chippers.

''Look, she even eats like a small bird.''

Sayu just wants to find a place where she could cry, but finding such a place is not easy at all. She is at the bottom of the food chain of this world.

... _  
_

* * *

Both sweat and tears are salty.

A magazine is spread over her lap, mommy turns its pages every so often. So many faces peek at her, from their compressed flatness. What are they even, these people?

''Sayu, look, Hideki!'' her mother has short fingers, and she jabs them into the magazine. Hideki Ryuga is grinning, as he is just another face. Launched from her mind, off and away. The page is turned, Sayu looks back at other printed people. This routine is just a looping of all the affection she has left. Shaped and Möbius strip-like.

Love is strange, Sayu thinks. It has always been handed to her. In rivets and in gulps. Pouring her own out isn't as simple. It doesn't follow any directions. She has to trust it to leak through.

Sachiko remains there. As softly as if she never thought about going. Quiet and smiling, and when she cries, she cries for both Sayu and herself. Her wide-eyed daughter is her calf, her fawn that she stands over even after it has been long dead. Something about it is painfully right.

They share a gentle moment. Her mind is still.

''Soon Sayu, you will come back, soon, I promise.'' wrapping her hair three times around her mothers finger. They really are short.

Sayu hiccups. All seems to be full of love.

...

* * *

Hope is falling like debris from the sky, Sayu is seated in a wheelchair.

She must have ventured in her sleep. Flown out of her bed like a curtain on a stormy day. God, if this isn't everything Sayu has wanted. This kind of hope is close knitted. Help comes in different forms and she is welcoming them all.

The hands tug on her, but now Sayu tugs on them back. They will pat her head and Sayu will shake her fingers. She is already running.

They are living in dynasty of heightened opinions and ill-fitting facts. There is no real power or a higher justice, the tv is trying to rape her and all around her are people who can't feel their sides after prolonged sleep. They are here as if there was nothing else, but the pictures are rising. Sayu will listen to them breathe at night when everything else is asleep.

And even while running Sayu makes sure to stay as close as she can to everything _they_ want her to be. The happy Sayu, the disabled Sayu, the Sayu who is orbiting nothingness in space, there is nothing visible in the distance. No difference in what she thinks she feels or what she feels. Pictures don't remain, they stream, and it is contagious, so contagious!

 _Please don't make statues, don't make them stay, don't allow rust, allow collisions and allow some change in what we trust_

It is earthly, Sayu is stripped and washed. Her bones wear her like a coat, but she isn't ugly. Thin so thin, her ribcage is hanging like a cage off her chest, tipping her slightly forward. One shoulder is lower than the other and Sayu wonders if there is a word that could describe how unimportant all of this is. She is a ripe being, whose skin has to be peeled.

...

Her family visits again and then the doctors allow her daddy to push her wheelchair around. Sayu is polite and shakes her fingers at every nurse that passes them by. They always smile at her while she looks at them. Some nurses have very pretty eyes that crinkle. Then there are some nurses that have golden-hazel eyes, the colour of weak tea.

If everyone had eyes made from tea.

Sachiko and Light follow after them, it would be nicer if they started to run, but they can't since they are still in a hospital and they think that they know what Sayu wants.

She can only wonder if they know that she is running to them. If they know that she wakes up every morning with strings of letters in names of symbols of beings of matter that she then rewrites into lists. Do they know that natural systems can be organized into stable large-scale patterns that emerge from individual events? That chance and chaos are close, _so_ close to touching and all Sayu has to do is rearrange and change for them to combust and make sense again?

The stop near a drink automat. She gets a cup of juice.

In compressible sequences are in their proximity, unintelligible, whispers in laws of consequences. All the people they are masses who keep trying to run away. And the magazine faces stay contorted as they are frozen in their ways. They are animals without a pyramid, without a fair system. Like a sand pile, with shovels of tumbling sand corns that shift the whole base every time a new killer, new president, a new neighbour comes in. **  
**

And then she takes a gulp. Puts her whole mouth over the edge and tips the miserable plastic cup, pouring its contents out. It flows well enough. She shuts her eyes and hums. It is sweet.

Only Light sees a bit of what she means in his disbelief.

With the window behind her Sayu became a dark blotch in his mind. Sucking in theories and reasons, dissecting his arguments with a blink of her eye. He takes a step to her wheelchair and kneels down. She is tiny and almost scrunched up, with loose skin and wide hazy eyes. Light reels back at the notion of touching this, this thing that only bears her name and innocent stare. What is she doing here? It might have been a mistake, there was nothing there.

He decides to let it go, but Light can't shake off the feeling that he just witnessed something he wasn't supposed to see. Obsessive thinking tears and wears gears down, and Sayu is ever present and not making sense.

Light lets go of the thought almost too eagerly. He is not used to being left in the dark.

Sayu exhales and goes back to the pictures. Worlds have started to collide on the structures of her hand. She better catch the dust.

* * *

 **Note: The direct references/inspirations that I take no credit for**

 **John D. Barrow** has a fascinating book **"Between Inner and Outer Space"** that discusses sequences, among hundreds of other unknown and known things. Some of Sayu's more brilliant thoughts come from there.

 **Bjork** has the song **Hyperballad** the title of the story was unabashedly taken from it among other things.


	3. August 16, 2003

**Note:**

 **Thank You,** MyNameIsBlinky, h3adl3ssduck, TheHazardsOfLove13 and the Guest user for reviewing the previous chapters. I appreciate it greatly.

The timeline will only be lightly touched upon.

* * *

 **... August 16, 2003**

* * *

...

''This is a tree."

It is not a tree, it is a picture of an elm. The psychologists hands are much bigger, they are holding her down. He is too warm and Sayu wants to jump out of the window or at least show him a real tree.

The brain scan beeps, it always beeps and then the colour swarms, travels between the lobes and bursts.

''Visual procession overflow, overactive _something whatever who cares..."_

Then they scribble the mumbles down and hold up another picture.

...

She is waiting. Almost wading, really. The hospital gown barely touches her breasts as she breathes. It is early morning and mid August. Most kids are probably asleep, sprawled over their mattresses, ankles in knots of sheets, sweaty and warm.

Summer holidays are here, but Sayu can only observe them from a vantage point consisting of a single window and a bed with straps.

Yet the morning is pleasant. Orange, with the sunrise. Waiting without hope is detonating. She can imagine. Scorching pavements, wobbly legs that all girls her age have. Holidays consist of many things that Sayu can recall. The yellowish skin, mosquito bites, light touches behind pitches. Her heart clenches. Perhaps her classmates are already kissing. During this summer heat dreams are destiny, painfully stagnating. Clouds up, let her daze in haze of the rolling days.

Her own legs would be thin too, speckled with sun freckles and light acne scars. She would find a boy, maybe from her math class and then they would kiss. On the cheeks and on their bottom lips, their hands in pockets, there would be no other touching. Just a peck, ghosting over her skin, tucking hair behind ears. Then she would run home in only her sandals, it would still be light outside. With electric poles framing her way, Sayu would call for her mom. Eat ice cold, home made noodles with parsley. Sleep in sweaty sheets at night.

She is here though. In a big, now loud hospital. It has woken up while she was wishing away.

 _Let me go_ , j _ust cut me out of this wheelchair, leave me be_. Sayu whispers so quietly that she herself doesn't hear it. Words have volumes, she rolls her tongue and tries. Repeats. Wish upon wish, this mantra is rolling. A wave that she repeats, hurls and spits out, again and again. She forms it into a loop, stretches it and moves, lays it over herself like a duvet. Covers herself in no sound.

 _Safe again._

It doesn't last for long. The feeling of being safe. Her shield is weathered when the nurses arrive and measure her pulse. Her day is shattered, the summer holidays are right next to her, but Sayu can't even turn her damned head. She can't escape from so many reminders. The world is faulty, but she is even faultier and there is no way she will be let into back into it.

 **Sayu is an anomaly.**

That's what the tests say daily. The doctors trust their opinions, while people trust their qualifications. Everything they say is repeated. It is a bigger loop, a more clever roundabout. Her own mantra against theirs. There is no use when there is not even an imaginary end. For a second Sayu can see the flashes, of herself being left stranded on a lone isle. Being strapped in a wheelchair is no different.

They won't let her go, Sayu realizes. It is clear. They will leave her here strapped to this wheelchair, with daily brain scans and noodles and –oh god- touches so many touches and short hair and nothing. They will cut her hair and fingernails, they will observe as blood is spread unevenly through her brain, they will look from above on her slow undoing. Crows, cannibals, she will be picked apart and written off as a mistake in theory.

A girl with a malfunctioning brain. How very _enlightening._

And then she is falling.

* * *

...

Sinking.

''You hit your head pretty hard huh?"

 _She hit her head again. Fell off the bed._

The doctor is either new or she doesn't remember him.

''Well, at least we know that you are capable of moving, slightly."

She isn't sure if he is joking. His tone is light. She can't look away, so she tries to speak. There is a jumble of various of responses, some more similar to animals sounds and screeches. Sayu is not sure what to answer with, how to express a _yes_ and a _no_ at the same time, how to even shape her lips. She glances upwards, toward his own gaze.

His face is suddenly hidden behind flashes and sums. Sayu bangs her head. Hard with a sick thud.

''There, you ju- she spasms- just close your eyes and stop thinking, I know all is too bright and sharp, everything either makes too much sense or none at all, Sayu, just sink for a moment, stop flying!"

The bedpost vibrates and vaguely she can feels the dull, spreading pain.

 _What is his name?_

Behind her vision the numbers are still shaking.

...

After her seizure it feels as if all external progress has been lost. The treatment has gotten worse, _softer_ and more abnormal, they don't let her sit. Under constant supervision, Sayu has no choice, but to forget possibilities.

Days in and days out, with no concept of time she is soundly drifting. Looking at the moving summer holidays that rest just six floors under head. Children are swarming playgrounds. Laughing, screaming and _talking_. The temperatures are unbearable.

She gets a thinner hospital gown when her family visits, and Sayu can feel the unspoken excuse in the air when her brother leaves. Light will stop visiting. It hurts. The part of Sayu that loves to talk and giggle is deteriorating. For her brother is not returning.

They must know about her seizure. Their hugs have become delicate, she is worried. No sounds come out, only some spit. Sachiko lightly wipes her mouth with her sleeve. The gesture is unfamiliar in every possible way. The dying pride, she can understand. To think that you have a child on the brink of genius and another one who is incapable of wiping saliva from their mouth.

She closes her eyes. They fall for it and leave, quietly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Nobody notices that Sayu has become capable of crying without making a single sound.

...

Another morning. The new doctor comes in and talks. He talks about himself, Sayu learns that he dislikes the subway and that his favourite food is ochazuke. He has a wife and a daughter who is graduating college. He tells her about the park behind the hospital, how _sunny_ it is.

''I have brought something,'' he says. It is a board game. _Apples to Apples._

''Do you like games?'' his eyes are twinkling and Sayu finds that it is hard to think about anything ugly or bad. If this is a subsumption it doesn't matter anymore.

He explains the rules, there are 321 red cards with nouns and 107 green cards with adjectives that serve as the base. Every adjective should have a match with a noun, one that fits well. In theory every adjective should have by default three nouns, but the game wasn't constructed in such definite ways.

The green card is drawn : **Foreboding**

''We will take turns and draw red noun cards,'' he motions at Sayu and she shakes her hands in response. He watches as her fingers lightly nip at seven cards, drawing the out from the pile. The cards are laid out on her lap and only then does he draw his own.

Seven words:

 _lateness_

 _eyes_

 _fly fishing_

 _Killer whales_

 _Ordinary people_

 _Pond Scum_

 _itch_

Sayu stares. All words seem as if they were a part of a whirlpool. All equally evil looking. But if one _feels_ right?

Holistic meanings, they swirl up her thoughts.

They exchange their cards.

 _smoke_

and then they play again.

 **confusing** became _paths,_ **patriotic** became _glue,_ **inevitable** became _skeleton._

Then doctor Ito has to go, but he promises that tomorrow, yes tomorrow is another day when they will play this and many other games. Today wasn't enough, and neither will tomorrow or the day after that, but she is clutching at straws here.

They do not _understand_ that the situation she was placed in was doomed from moment she was rendered to think. Her mind is a firecracker of the most volatile kind. Just showing it a spark is enough. Leaving her without any kind of stimuli is like leaving a toddler alone with a matchbox. Something is simply bound to happen.

...

Next day everything is welcome and Sayu flourishes. Words work and combine, Library is to book as book is to pages,  
Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minific, for Sayu is over-shining.

Even the red cards that she gets every day, as annually as food, provide only hints. Pieces that she has to scramble together and lay out, to stare at and contemplate, try and redo until something inside her head clicks and she can see clearly again.

 **Regretful** became _Sunken Ships,_ **Impatient** became _Spontaneous Combustion,_ **Black & White **became _salt_

Most coincidences go unrecognized. She understands this. Just pick two people at random, the probability that both are wearing green shoes is low, but if she considers 20 ways in which those two people could match, the probability of coincidence is close to certainty. So it shouldn't be surprising, that a game that relies on the understanding of coincidence really is this versatile and well fitting.

And all in all, it is not that strange that they decided on games in particular.

* * *

They play Jenga next week, then they move onto Scrabble and Shogi, Carcassonne, Monopoly and Go. By the end of September Sayu is the holder of 42 wins, carrying only two losses.

She can now hold her chopsticks, without shaking.

A strategy is a long term, far reaching thing. Each one results in a certain payoff, negative and positive, _always_ according to the other players strategies. What difference is there between a game of charades and saying hello to a person you don't actually like? To build the highest tower, to win.

Sayu can only see it less clearly.

Life is a board game, and she is only frolicking around it. There is probably no real way of escaping it, since any person becomes a player once he or she has been claimed or is claiming other pieces. This interconnection is what will always be causing difficulties. Apathy or humbleness just don't cut it, in the end there isn't a single person who doesn't hold a desire for victory.

A question that remains, if _all of this is true_ is, whether there is a possible best strategy. One that should be adopted in the sense that any deviation from it will not pay back in the long run.

Should she even put her faith in such a thing? In the long run, when they are all dying and time has to be specific? There is no absolute meaning to the concept of now, yet Sayu is clinging to it like a leech.

Bloodsuckers, all of them.

Doctor Ito has promised her only a few things. All of them seem unlikely.

...

* * *

 **...**

The following days Sayu is receding. Game playing has done her good so far, but now it seems as if her existence is shrinking. In irdial, something big is slowly moving. If there is God, if there is knowledge or evidence of things that we are all in effect playing a game with a supreme being...Sayu can't promise any understanding.

In particular, are things like the problems of free will or suffering understandable as optimal strategies in games against something that has been always playing?

This is a wager, and if something supreme is indeed happening, the potential of a positive payoff to be received after holding such a belief is infinitely greater when compared to to the negative outcome, the loss one would feel if a God did exist.

She is torn, and all that remains as she is holds the armrests of her new motorized wheelchair is the thought that all of this was in the apples and the cards, the words and the nouns, the numbers and trembles, the eyes. Eyes, red nouns, apples.

It is scary.

* * *

The doctors attributed her new found depression to another part of her personality, namely overthinking. Which is bullshit, but reality still states that whatever they say will be accepted as the truth. Maybe there is some truth in there, there always is, for even subjective truth must be a truth. It's just that Sayu doesn't particularly care about what she is told to think.

All she wants is a speck of utter truth, to make a pursuit.

Eternal truths, blueprints, plans, whatever, _something must exist_ from which all of these temporal realities derive their qualities.

To calm her down they gave her a _Hanayama Vortex. She disassembled it in a few minutes, but couldn't put it back even after four days of fiddling_.

The distribution of things. She was forced to stay in bed. As usual.

That was also the time when the comparisons started to stream in. Inescapable in their human lack of sympathy. And now, when she is lying in bed, counting the last few minutes that are left of September, unable to fall asleep because of the hushed voices, she hears their unfinished sentences.

''She is the quarter of her brother, the rest of her are swirls and interloping gut feelings that she can't connect,''

It is tiring. To listen to talk behind closed doors, to imagine the glances nurses exchange in the hallways. To see people as they adore Light.

''Yes, the Yagami children, both ... ''

Sayu will never be the golden one. The shining.

''Light is still something else...''

Of course. Indeed. She agrees.

''Entirely.''

The voice drifts closer and Sayu shuts her eyes as doctor Ito enters her room. 11:58, only two minutes left of this day, of this month.

 _You are a traitor of my feelings._ Is all that she can think. He had no right to compare her against a person that can speak. A person that isn't bound to a wheelchair. She is so bored of cowards. People like him that are afraid of saying what they really think.

She would never stay quiet if she could speak again. She would talk and spew out half truths and silliness, she would cry and sing, giggle, yell, never whisper. She would speak to lonely people, explain the nuclear alchemy that is inside of stars - the explosions that distributed the elements of life throughout space until some of them ended up in herself and every other human being. Sayu would share her world with the world, if she could.

And then there are people like him, that hide behind their professions and lie, lie to children.

The disgust must be visible on her face, because when he takes the completed vortex puzzle from her hand his eyes widen. He is ashamed.

People like him need to have their standards squashed to understand that there is more to intelligence than just _puzzle completing_.

' I heard you' she mouths at him, completely silently shaking him up. 'I heard you and saw you, or rather, through you.'

He doesn't understand and leaves, quickly.

There is no point in staying and rotting away here. They are all sore losers anyway.

* * *

Note:

.

For further clarification, Doctor Ito disappointed Sayu with his comment, when he compared her to an incomplete Light, rather than herself. He still has many good qualities, which Sayu refuses to see, since she is hurt.

references:

 **Ochazuke** is a dish that sounded simple, but unusual enough - green tea poured over cooked rice served often with seafood such as salmon.

 **Apples to Apples** is an actual game that I chose for two reasons. Shows Sayu's instincts, tests the scope of her verbal understanding and also offers a good reference for further predictions regarding Ryuk's preferred fruit. All the games mentioned belong to their respective owners.

Credits:

 **Steven Brams** : has works about game theory that I only read in the interpretation of the physicist **John D. Barrow** (who as I already mentioned has the book Between Inner and Outer Space that helped me)

 **Pascals Wager :** inspired this.

. Thank You for reading, reviewing.


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